Question about Roman subjugation area

[Zaknafien]

I dont think so. Teutoburg was the disaster that caused Augustus to change his mind and set Roman borders at the river. Prior to that he has plans to fully Romanize the Germanics. Think of it, the course of history might have been changed. The Roman empire preserved from ruin, Christ dying unremembered on a lonely cross, the non-appearance of the English language, etc.

[Watchman]

"Planning to" and "able to realize" are completely different things you know.

[Kongeslask]

Another thing is the fact that even if they did go through with a campaign to conquer Magna Germania, the relative unattractiveness of the land would make it less desirable for roman colonisation than the areas along the "Rhenus". It seems likely that they would go for looser control, which in EB can be represented by limiting those areas to "alliances available".

Another thing is that if we are to consider what the romans would consider the natural limits of their domains, it seems a bit strange that Britannia is "subjugation available" while Hibernia is "alliances available". It is just a short sea journey from Britannia, and probably would not be more difficult to annex and romanise than Britannia was, assuming the romans had desired to do so.

[Watchman]

I'm also somewhat dubious if the German lands could actually have supported the presence of the frontier/garrison armies required. This was, after all, well over a millenia before the advent of the heavy swing-plough which pretty much revolutionized Northern European agriculture by allowing the exploitation of the fertile heavy clay soil areas.

[pockettank]

well what i wanna know is why the area around carthage is 100% desert cuz i heard somewhere a while ago where they found aqueducts and highways in the northernmost part of where the Sahara is today because it was a fertile area and the romans used it until the desert grew over top there abondened citys after the fall of the romans in that area

EDIT: sorry about it being off topic.. i was just wondering

[Sakkura]

well what i wanna know is why the area around carthage is 100% desert cuz i heard somewhere a while ago where they found aqueducts and highways in the northernmost part of where the Sahara is today because it was a fertile area and the romans used it until the desert grew over top there abondened citys after the fall of the romans in that area

EDIT: sorry about it being off topic.. i was just wondering

It isn't all desert AFAIK. Wherever your armies can move are certainly not desert because that was pretty much off-limits for armies in antiquity.

[Imperator]

@Watchman: Is German soil really much harder than, say Belgian or English to work? We know the Romans did fine there. (That's actually a serious question, I'm not using rhetorical questions or anything)

The type II governments don't just mean "What they conquered" or "What they nearly conquered". If that was the case, how would Epirus have ANY, since they died out around 270 BC? We need to improvise a little or factions that remained static (Ex- Saba, Armenia, Seleukids, Makedonia, etc) wouldn't have ANY outside their basic homeland area.

[Watchman]

@Watchman: Is German soil really much harder than, say Belgian or English to work? We know the Romans did fine there. (That's actually a serious question, I'm not using rhetorical questions or anything)

Far as I know the Celts pretty much made a point of nicking all the good farmland around there back in the day. (Or Celtic culture spread onto such regions, however that now went.) The British Celts and Belgae were AFAIK quite clearly noticeably more wealthy than the Germans on the average, which in turn suggests their lands were of the type that yielded good harvest with the tools and means of the time, which in turn the Romans had no technological problems making use of.

The Germans were left with the northern woodlands not nearly as well suited for agriculture, partly AFAIK just because lot of them were of the heavy clay-soil type the light plows of the period flat out didn't make much of an impression on. Ergo, sparse habitation and reliance on largely ecologically self-sufficient tribal levies as there simply wasn't enough of a surplus to maintain a specialist warrior class in the Celtic fashion.

[Sakkura]

The type II governments don't just mean "What they conquered" or "What they nearly conquered". If that was the case, how would Epirus have ANY, since they died out around 270 BC? We need to improvise a little or factions that remained static (Ex- Saba, Armenia, Seleukids, Makedonia, etc) wouldn't have ANY outside their basic homeland area.

The way I understood it is those areas are the ones that were or could have been conquered and in some way incorporated into the realm for longer periods. So a Hellenic faction would have been able to incorporate basically all the areas of the Diadochoi, other places with Greek settlements and perhaps some other areas with peoples they had some proper way of incorporating.

The Romans just make it a little easier to "guess" which people they might have been able to incorporate by having historically done it to such a huge area.

[Imperator]

@ Watchman- Excellent point. Besides, I just now remembered that passage from Caesar about how much wealthier the Gauls were from trade/better land, which made them more civilized, while the Germans were real savages, living off hunting at subsistance level. Probably untrue, but reveals that there must have been a rather large wealth disparity between Gaul and Germany.
Learning is cool!


All that said, I still think the Romans had a decent shot at occupying Germania successfully.

[Captian Cornelius]

I dont think so. Teutoburg was the disaster that caused Augustus to change his mind and set Roman borders at the river. Prior to that he has plans to fully Romanize the Germanics. Think of it, the course of history might have been changed. The Roman empire preserved from ruin, Christ dying unremembered on a lonely cross, the non-appearance of the English language, etc.

I‘m a bit confused as to how the conquest of Germania would have stoped the spread of christianty. Care to explain that?

[pockettank]

I‘m a bit confused as to how the conquest of Germania would have stoped the spread of christianty. Care to explain that?

I think he's saying that it would have made the Roman Empire stronger and more Confident in themselves and would have done better in other areas also and probly wouldnt have caused unrest due to the hatred of the Germans and other barbians religouns cuz they wouldnt be there any more thus Roman religon ruling supreme

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

I‘m a bit confused as to how the conquest of Germania would have stoped the spread of christianty. Care to explain that?

Yeah, that confused me too. I don't see any relationship between early Christianity and Germania. Sure, the Catholic Church wouldn't have become powerful in the power vacuum after the Germans invaded. But, Christianity was nearly taking over before any Germanians had any effect on the Roman Empire. And I don't see how holding Germania would have stopped that, in the east.

And Roman religion wasn't all that strong to begin with. In the east (where Christianity began), most of the people still followed Greek gods, and some Zoroastrianism. There was even a small Jewish population spread across the eastern Roman Empire that served as a base for early Christianity's spreading.

[pockettank]

idk that was just my guess at what he meant but oh well its all i could think of to help him oh well lol